Idigencia

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The data that you draw your conclusion from is nearly 20 years old. The fact is that firearm violence in the US is in decline, and firearm violence in Costa Rica is on the rise. Regardless of the color of anyone's skin (a point that _you_ brought up, by the way) Costa Rica is not really on the "Top Places to Take Teenage Kids" list. Costa Rica is so riddled with violence, in fact, that some hotels have armed guards who will shoot 4 A.M. intruders on sight. Note that this student's unfortunate (and totally preventable) death will not be recorded in Costa Rica as a murder, but rather as a justifiable homicide. Armed guards are empowered to shoot to kill in Costa Rica.

vertigo is posting incorrect figures. In 2009, the total US homicide rate was 5.0/100,000, based on 15,241 instances of "murder and non-negligent homicide" among a population of just over 307,000,000. Roughly 70% of those instances involved a firearm, making the US firearm murder rate 3.5/100,000. http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data... for the total US murder rate. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...) puts the Costa Rica total murder rate at 11 and climbing, whereas the US overall murder rate is in a steady decline. In short, vertigo, your numbers are roughly reversed. Nice try at fostering anti-US hatred, though.